One dinner to check things out turned into several lunches and dinners because the menu's new direction and newcomer Katherine Clapner's flourishes are my kind of food.

music

ACL FEST 2003

ACL Fest Interviews

Chatting with some ACL Fest headliners.

ACL FEST 2003

ACL Fest Record Reviews

ACL FEST 2003

Tim McCanlies is known in the movie business as a great script writer with few scripts that have actually hit the big screen. With the Sept. 19 release of Secondhand Lions, long thought to be one of the best unproduced scripts around, that will change.

BY LOUIS BLACK

More McCanlies, Texas

The full interview with the director of 'Secondhand Lions'

BY LOUIS BLACK

Where the Wild Things Star

'Secondhand Lions' is only the latest production in which Bobbi Colorado-trained beasts play a part.

BY MARC SAVLOV

Family Circle

Don Howard's new documentary turns Texas football, cheerleading, and weddings into an anthropological model -- with a little help from Jung.

BY ANNE S. LEWIS

Cinematexas Spotlight

Les Modéles de Pickpocket

BY MARRIT INGMAN

Cinematexas 8 Schedule

Go see Cinematexas!

Cinematexas Games Without Borders

Short Cuts

There's so much going on in Austin film this fall that it almost feels like a real city.

BY MARC SAVLOV

TV Eye

Las Vegas and Lee Kyung Hae?

BY BELINDA ACOSTA

Screens Reviews

Skin Deep

If it hadn't been such a hack job (and a transparent, two-star rewrite of one of Edwards' numerous commercial peaks), Skin Deep might've done for John Ritter what its blueprint, 10, did for Dudley Moore: transform the TV vet into a viable leading man at the box office.

Film Reviews

Beyond Re-Animator

The mad scientist is back in a sequel that was not screened before press time.

Charlotte Sometimes

A sophisticated relationship drama about young Asian-Americans.

The Fighting Temptations

Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé join the church choir.

Rivers and Tides

Andy Goldsworthy's art of the ephemeral in nature is granted permanence in this feature documentary.

Secondhand Lions

In this unique family film that's also an ode to heroic movies gone by, a boy is sent for the summer to live with his two eccentric uncles in Texas.

Underworld

Kate Beckinsale bares her fangs as a vampire assassin in in a shaggy werewolf story.

arts & culture

Flicking the Switch

An interview with New York playwright and director Richard Maxwell, who has developed a following for his work featuring painstakingly realistic language rendered onstage by actors who move, speak, and sing seemingly without expression.

BY STEVE MOORE

A Work That Houses Us All

Bach's Mass in B Minor is the center around which Conspirare orbits, and next week the choir will be performing the work for the third time since it was founded in 1991. "It feels like a return to our foundation and our roots," says director Craig Hella Johnson.

BY JERRY YOUNG

Articulations

Actor, writer, director, singer, and Texas State University teacher and mentor Larry Hovis has passed away.

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Arts Reviews

How Late It Was, How Late

How Late It Was, How Late, adapted from James Kelman's novel, finds the Rude Mechanicals depicting a sightless, Scottish ex-con's odyssey through the humiliating and confusing bureaucracy of Britain's welfare state with intensity, hilarity, and the company's outstandingly creative theatrical vision.

Be Aggressive

On one level, Annie Weisman's Be Aggressive skewers SoCal culture, from Spanish stucco to smoothie shops, but at its heart this tale of a cheerleader whose mother has just died shows us with humor and affection how to deal with the unexpected holes in our lives.

columns

Page Two

Attending the Toronto Film Festival provides some perspective on global perceptions of the United States -- as well as a truly great film experience; the City Council's budget performance is embarrassing, as is Rick Perry's state of vacuous denial.